The next gay marriage battles

6/19/12 7:23 PM EDT

The North Carolina ballot measure banning same-sex marriage, and President Barack Obama’s subsequent announcement that he supports marriage equality, wasn’t the end of the fight this year.

There’s still much more to come, as this Star Tribune report on fundraising for a Minnesota constitutional amendment suggests:

The lead group opposed to a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage raised more than $3.1 million since January, according to campaign finance reports released Tuesday.

Minnesotans United for All Families raised the money from 16,000 individual contributors, with more than 90 percent of from in the state.

All told, the group has raised $4.6 million dollars since forming the campaign. With the November election still nearly five months, both sides are likely to rack up breathtaking fundraising numbers…

Minnesota for Marriage, the lead group pushing the amendment, has not released its numbers, but is expected to any day. The group, heavily backed by local and national religious groups, is expected to report sizable fundraising numbers, as well.

The campaign could end up being the most expensive and unpredictable of the political season. Both sides are expected to draw heavily from a diverse mix of religious faiths, racial backgrounds and political affiliations.

Minnesota is one of four states that will likely vote on same-sex marriage in November, making it one of the most consequential elections ever for the gay marriage movement.

It’s not the number of states that has upped the ante. Rather, it’s that the four — Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington state — are all blue states, some more strongly Democratic than others, making it likely that one of them will become the first ever to approve a ballot measure permitting gay marriage.

And if none of those four states end up permitting gay marriage, it’s a powerful signal that the electorate hasn’t evolved quite as much as widely thought.